


just as we dreamed

by xiseoks



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: M/M, a bit sci fi a bit fantasy a bit dystopian, ghibli style romance, idrk, just run with it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 07:17:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19127224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xiseoks/pseuds/xiseoks
Summary: baekhyun and jongdae only ever deliver dreams; they are merely the messengers who drop them into the minds of sleeping souls before being whisked back into the cosmos. they want more though, want to know what it's like -- to dream.





	just as we dreamed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goesonfordaes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goesonfordaes/gifts).



> this is a small thing for ma dearest lu’s birthday <3 happy birthday lulu!! listen kdjfkdjg i know you don’t like the dreams come true mv because of the filter but story-wise, this was the best mv to write a quick au for :~) thought of doing smsy since that one’s your fave but then it would just edge a little too close to an hp au akjfkdjf
> 
> i hope things make sense, i went by the explanation the girls gave in one of their dct interviews and then just improvised the rest ;; happy birthday luLU 
> 
> [[ dreams come true mv ]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu4fhBXWkAQ) stan wjsn and ao3 user goesonfordaes

The earth is haunting once the sun goes down and all that is left are shimmering golden blinks of light, the city’s own take on stars against the line of the horizon.

Not _haunting_ like the wail of a ghost muffled by the floorboards of an abandoned old home, not like the campy decorations of October nights.

Haunting like eerie, unsettling. Like the chill of a lake on an autumn evening, like spotting something at the corner of your eye but realizing it was all just your imagination when you turn to check. A quiet sort of chill that turns your blood cold enough to be cautious, but not nearly enough to run away. The last thing Jongdae wants to do is run away.

Tightening his pea coat around himself, he steps off of the train platform and onto the bridge. The train doors slide shut behind him before it shoots back off into the night, its track undetectable and its destination unknown.

There’s a deep purple to the sky that wasn’t there before. Pitch black to those who glance at it, but Jongdae knows better. It is a goodbye to those like him, but to Jongdae, it’s a welcoming.

He digs into his pockets, pulls out his phone. Doesn’t even glance at it before swiping it upwards, sending a confirmation to the big bosses that he’s got all his assigned dreams delivered. It was a long night, as it always is, but Jongdae knows it's only just begun.

“Jongdae!”

Baekhyun stands at the end of the bridge, where the mainland meets the steel. He’s just on time, Jongdae thinks to himself with a fond smile.

“You madman,” Baekhyun continues, walking towards him. “What are you still doing out on the bridge? We should be heading back to the academy by now, the Dreamers will be here any second.”

Jongdae chuckles, fiddling with his phone and sliding it back down into his pocket when he’s finished. “You never cease to surprise me, Baekhyun.”

Baekhyun only arches his brow at him, confused. “Surprise you how?”

“Is it truly me that you seek out when you wander off path?” Jongdae says with a mischievous, knowing grin as he removes his earbuds and pockets those too. “Surely if you were as much of a stickler for following rules as all the others believe, you’d be the first on that train back to the academy, back to our world and the cosmos.”

“You’re my friend,” Baekhyun says. “I wouldn’t leave here without you.”

“I believe that,” Jongdae says, his smile going softer. “And yet, at the same time, I don’t.”

“I don’t understand. What’s going on with you?”

“You wouldn’t leave without me, you say?” Jongdae says, ignoring his question to ask his own. “Then follow me.”

Baekhyun blinks at him in shock, looking around them. “But everyone’s already gone up… the Dreamers will be here soon, Jongdae, we’ll miss the last train back…”

“We will miss something much more special if we take that train back now.”

Jongdae swivels on his heel to walk away along the length of the bridge, idly dragging his hand across the railing and humming joyfully as he watches the sky deepen in its purple. Behind him, is only silence, no familiar pitter patter of Baekhyun’s short, quick steps, but he doesn’t turn back, because he knows — is certain — that Baekhyun will follow anyway.

And he does, after a resigned groan. The tap-tap of his short steps against the cement of the bridge is comforting, in a way.

“Wandering off in the human world,” Baekhyun murmurs behind him, disgruntled. Jongdae merely smiles. “Insane. Have you even finished your deliveries?”

Jongdae raises his empty messenger bag before dropping it back to drape across his shoulder. “All dreams accounted for, safe and sound in their tiny humans’ mindscapes.”

“At least we’ve got that much going for us,” Baekhyun says. They walk along the bridge in silence for a while, before Baekhyun breaks it with feeble, curious words.

“These bridge lights make you look as if you’re glowing,” he muses.

“Aren’t we always, in this world?”

“More so than usual,” Baekhyun says. “Dream carriers like us have a sickly yellow glow, not very beautiful at all. But you’re glowing...almost silver. Like the moon. You aren’t secretly the soul of the moon, are you? It would explain how you get away with so much.”

Jongdae lets out a bark of a laugh. Baekhyun was too amusing, too curious for his own good. “Ha! Me, the moon. Don’t speak so loudly, she may hear you and then we’ll really be in for it.” Jongdae glances consciously up at the sky as if the moon herself has extended an ear in their conversation, as if she has any interest in the ramblings of a few dream carriers.

“Catch up, will you?” Jongdae calls over his shoulder, catching a quick glimpse of Baekhyun huffing before jogging forward to keep up pace with him.

“What are we seeing that’s so grand?” Baekhyun says, a bit of a pep in his step now as he smiles at Jongdae, a sparkle in his eyes. “I’ve never been on earth this long past duty.”

“Me neither,” Jongdae says. “I’m not even sure exactly what we’ll be seeing.”

“What?” Baekhyun gapes. “But you said… What is all of this then, just mere curiosity?”

“Of course. Is that not why you came along, too?”

“Well… _yes_ , but only because I thought you knew what…”

“I never know what I’m doing, Baekhyun,” Jongdae says with a breezy smile on his face. “I’m surprised you haven’t caught on by now that I’m winging absolutely everything. Everyday is a new adventure.”

The smile returns to Baekhyun’s face as he skips into the night and leaps onto the base of a streetlight, hand clamping onto the pole. He swings himself around, grinning at Jongdae. “Like the time we stole that comet’s vehicle and jumped stars?”

“Oh, that was fun. He was so mad at us, even though we returned it in perfect shape! It’s like it never left.”

“You know how those comets are. Always fuming with anger,” Baekhyun says, leaping off the streetlight and bouncing back to Jongdae’s side. “What about the time we used the cosmic tech to create holograms of fireflies in a cave?”

“I’d almost forgotten we’d done that. We should do it again. And bring the camera this time, since someone had forgotten it last time.”

“When your best friend promises you firefly holograms, you don’t think about a camera,” Baekhyun defends.

“Look,” Jongdae says, suddenly stopping them abruptly in their path. He guides Baekhyun to the edge of the bridge, where they press themselves against the metallic fence. They face the landscape, the line where the flat of the lake meets the horizon and all of the open universe rests above it. “Look at this sky, Baekhyun. It’s _purple._ It _always_ turns purple right before I board that stupid train back to the academy, and then I’m left to wonder what it all means, why it turns this color, what the Dreamers get to see that I don’t. Don’t you wonder too?”

“Why do you think it goes purple?”

“Isn’t it obvious? It’s the dreams. When the Dreamers come to bring the humans’ dreams to life, that’s where they go. The dream orbs aren’t purple for nothing.” Jongdae starts to walk backwards on the bridge as he passionately exclaims towards Baekhyun, excitedly waving his arms about at the mere prospect of what lies beyond. “The sky is where they fade into when they’re being dreamt away by…”

“By our fleshy friends,” Baekhyun finishes.

“Please don’t call humans that," Jongdae laughs, before suddenly rushing forward to grab Baekhyun’s wrist and pulling him faster along the length of the bridge.

Baekhyun laughs into the night, the cool rush of air hitting his face. “And how do you plan on getting up into the sky?” he yells over the sound of their feet hitting the cement, over the sound of the wind rushing through their jackets, messenger bags, and hair.

“By taking the train, of course!”

As if on cue, a train manifests behind one of the clouds in the sky above them, soaring down through the air on its invisible tracks until it glides smoothly onto the cement at the end of the bridge. Like all of the cosmic trains, it glows a heavenly white, and it is painted with stars and sparkles and planets and depictions of galaxies, courtesy of the academy’s art students. Unlike the train Jongdae and Baekhyun are used to, however, this one is bigger, wider, and will take them into the sky of dreams.

“You can’t take that train!” Baekhyun says. “That’s the Dreamers’ train!”

“You can do anything if you’re curious enough!”

The train doors slide open with a hefty wheeze as they near it, nearly out of breath by the end. A woman stands by the entrance, suited in one of the academy’s uniforms with a sash over her shoulders.

“Identification, please,” she says.

“We’re only dream carriers,” Jongdae says, trying to catch his breath, “so I have no identification that will allow us on this train. I hope, however, that you’ll search yourself and find that part of you that knows you don’t have to abide by the rules the bosses make, that magic and wonder is not wonder nor magic if no one is stepping out of the boundaries created for them by a few old and out-of-touch gods.”

The woman gapes, eyes wide as she opens her mouth to speak, but finding herself unable to form a proper response.

“Please,” Jongdae continues. “We only want to see the dreams.”

Her eyes glaze over the bridge, where the sky turns into an even deeper purple. Then, with another lingering look at Jongdae and Baekhyun, she stands aside, granting them entry.

“Welcome,” she says with a smile. Noticeably, it is less forced, and it meets her eyes. There’s magic there, in her expression, shining through past the mask. “You may take the nearest seat.”

Excited, Jongdae throws a grin Baekhyun’s way before tugging him inside. Baekhyun stops them though, to face the woman.

“Thank you,” Baekhyun says, peering in to read her name tag, “Yeoreum.”

In the dream carriers’ train, it is all what you’d expect from a train. Cars and seats along the edge, bars for holding yourself up. It has never been crowded, because there were plenty to go around for the carriers, but Jongdae and Baekhyun would be lying if they’d said they didn’t mind the small trains.

Especially now knowing how grand the Dreamers’ train looks inside. It very nearly doesn’t even look like a train at all, like they’ve been transported to some other world instead. The room they stand in is square-shaped, arched windows decorated along the walls, where Dreamers stand at with their heads poking out, arms reached outwards to release their dreams — which appear to be bubble-like now, as opposed to the solid orbs they are when carriers deliver them — into the purple sky.

“It’s so beautiful,” Baekhyun says, stepping onto the marble-like floor. Jongdae follows closely behind, a grin on his face. There’s a different sensation to the air here. Where on the bridge, on the earth, the air was clear, here it feels like silk against the skin, completely intoxicating and overwhelming.

The train starts to move again as they take the nearest seat, like the woman had told them to, taking off into the air. As it soars higher and higher into the clouds, the colors of the sky beyond the windows turn from a dark blue, to a faded violet, to a rich deep purple.

 _“Now entering the dreamland,”_ a voice above says, static and spackled like an intercom. _“Hold tight, Dreamers. If you get lost, take a leap of faith.”_

The Dreamers around them appear unaffected, bubbles of dreams floating idly in the palms of their hands, then drifting out the window into the sky.

Jongdae feels a sense of dizziness overcome him, turning to see Baekhyun’s already got his head lolled to the side, eyes feeling a bit heavy. Jongdae cannot help but chuckle, gently pushing Baekhyun’s head onto his shoulder.

Baekhyun hums lightly in his daze. “How...how are the Dreamers immune?” Baekhyun asks, watching as they continue work as normal.

“Well, they’ve been doing this for their entire lives. They know how to navigate around here. It’s like the woman on the intercom said, about getting lost.”

“Is that what’s happening to me?” Baekhyun mumbles, eyes falling shut and head falling heavy.

“To both of us,” Jongdae says, resting his cheek against Baekhyun’s hair as he cannot fight the drifting of his eyes any longer. “Goodnight, Baekhyun.”

Sleep washes over them like a wave, the silky air wrapping around them just as a blanket would.

 

 

 

When Baekhyun opens his eyes, he is met with a moving sky.

He lifts his head, only to realize he is curled up on the center of a bed — which happens to be floating in the center of a sea of clouds — which happen to be pink.

His first instinct is to look for Jongdae, but he quickly realizes he is standing above and behind him, feet on the blankets, hand held above his eyes like he is searching and scouting through the thick mist of clouds.

“You’re here,” Jongdae says. “It’s about time.”

“We’re flying?” Baekhyun says, scrambling up. “We’re on a bed. In the sky. And we’re flying!”

“Well, we’re dreaming that we’re flying, technically,” Jongdae says with a teasing smile.

“I am _living_ in this moment right _here_ , so _I_ say I am _flying_ ”.

Baekhyun relishes in the feeling of the air against him, raising every single strand of hair on his skin. The clouds practically swallow them up as they phase through the sky. Clouds did not feel like this back home; they were stuffy and much too wet. These though, were like puffs of fluff, and they seemed to smell faintly like strawberries. He feels his skin prickle with excitement, with a hum of thrill he only ever gets when he is with Jongdae.

He feels heavy eyes on him and turns to find Jongdae himself gazing at him with a depth in his eyes, the corner of his lips turned up in the slightest, but fondest manner.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing,” he says, before turning away, that smile still faint on his face. His eyes close though, and he tilts his face up as if bathing in the sky light.

“Is it everything you imagined?” Baekhyun asks softly, a rush of contentment flowing through him at the sight of Jongdae looking so at peace.

“Everything and more,” Jongdae says, humming in satisfaction. He peeks an eye open at Baekhyun to catch him still staring at him in awe, because even with the pink sky in their surrounding, Jongdae is still Baekhyun’s favorite thing to look at.

Then, Jongdae’s scrambling forward to sit on the bed instead, and weaves his arm through Baekhyun’s, resting his head on his shoulder as he positions himself identical to him. Their legs dangerously swing off the edge of the bed, the unknown below. Baekhyun presses into Jongdae, smiling fondly at how Jongdae's pinkening cheeks match the clouds.

“If you keep pulling on my arm so hard, we’ll fall,” Baekhyun says.

“I already have.”

Baekhyun reddens, means to respond, or attempt to, anyway, if he can find the right words — but then something else captures his eyes.

Just below where his feet sway, down where the earth would be were this the normal world, something dark purple seems to be forming. It begins to swirl darkly, slowly, forming a funnel or sorts. It does not scare Baekhyun nearly as much as it would in reality, but he knows it doesn’t mean any good.

“Jongdae?”

The other hums into his shoulder. “Hm?”

“Is that a massive black hole in the sky?”

“I believe it is a massive purple hole, Baekhyun,” Jongdae says.

“So you see it too,” Baekhyun says. “I’m not sure if that makes me feel better.”

“It’s the dream trying to wake us up,” Jongdae says, the breezy smile still on his face. “We’re not meant to be here, because we’re just carriers.”

“Oh,” Baekhyun says, plainly, before the panic settles in. “ _Oh._ Is that — is that bad for us, then?”

“Well, I don’t imagine it will hurt,” Jongdae says. “When we fall into it, we’ll get the feeling of falling but we won’t hit anything. We’ll just wake up.”

“ _When_ we fall into it?”

“How else do you expect to wake up, Baekhyunnie?” Jongdae grins. “Plus, it’ll be the best part.”

“The academy did not prepare me for this,” Baekhyun says in a brief fit of alarm.

“The academy does not dare to touch on it,” Jongdae says, a wide grin on his face as he sticks his head a little too far over the edge of the bed. “An entire school dedicated to magic and dreams and the endless mysteries of the cosmic universe, and yet they keep us all away from the biggest mystery of them all, forming right before our very eyes.”

The hole swirls darkly beneath their feet, swallowing up the innocent clouds around them. Baekhyun feels apprehension welling up into him at having to jump into that. “How did I let you talk me into this?”

“I didn’t have to talk you into it,” Jongdae says with a chuckle. “It’s the thrill-seeking part of you that decided for you. I know it’s difficult to admit, but you’ll have to face the truth some day, Baekhyun. That it isn’t just me dragging you along on adventure after adventure. It’s us, together, as it’s always been, because you love this, and you relish in it, and it’s why you keep coming no matter how desperately you want to stay in your safe bed, in your safe classrooms instead of in the skies with me.”

He perches his chin on Baekhyun’s shoulder and looks at him with a sparkle in his eyes and a mischievous grin on his face.

“You can pretend all you want, Baekhyunnie,” Jongdae says, “but you love it just as much as I do.”

Baekhyun swallows nervously, taking his gaze from Jongdae’s knowing smile, to the pinkening sky, to the strawberry clouds, to Jongdae’s feet swaying gleefully over the massive black hole, and realizes he’s right.

“It wasn’t as if I put up much of a fight anyway, was it?” Baekhyun says with a laugh.

“I didn’t even have to say much to get you to come along,” Jongdae says. It should be odd, talking with him so nonchalantly on a flying bed in the middle of a strawberry sky as a hole threatens to swallow them up. “But I knew you would,” he continues. “I knew you couldn’t resist.”

“Well, it’s no surprise you know me better than I know myself,” Baekhyun says, muffled by the winds getting stronger as the black hole gets larger. Around them, thunder rumbles, and a flash of lightning strikes just nearby, white in a darkening sea of pinks and violets.

“Are you ready?” Jongdae asks, lifting his head from Baekhyun’s shoulder to look him in the eyes.

“Not in the slightest,” Baekhyun says, looking warily downwards again. “Can’t we just stay here forever? In dreamland?”

Jongdae laughs, moving his arm down so that his fingers can intertwine with Baekhyun’s. “If you would like to have a big gaping black hole following us wherever we go, then sure.”

“It’s not optimal, but we can make it work.”

“You’re silly,” Jongdae chuckles. “Will it help if I push you in with no warning?”

“No,” Baekhyun says. “We have to do it together. Like we do everything else. I’m only half as brave to do these things because you’re here with me.”

“Is that so?” Jongdae grins, tightening his grip on Baekhyun’s hand.

“And you’re okay with it? With returning to all of that, with living like that? Delivering dreams but not getting to experience them?”

Jongdae hums. “Of course I am. I never live the same adventure twice. Besides, I am already living my ultimate dream back in reality, one that no flying bed can beat.”

“You are?” Baekhyun asks. There was never a time Jongdae wasn’t complaining about being confined there.

But then he looks back at Jongdae in curiosity, and realizes Jongdae is looking only at Baekhyun, with an awe in his eyes that brings a shiver down his spine.

“By having you at my side,” Jongdae says _._

Baekhyun's heart seems to slow down, then quickly speed up again when he makes sense of Jongdae's words, of what they mean when paired with that meaningful look in his eyes and dreamy smile on his face. His throat bobs, and his heart swells. He feels it soar, much like a bed in a pink sky.

“I...I outrank a flying bed?” he asks, a bit of a squeak.

“You say that as if a mattress soaring through the skies should outrank you,” Jongdae laughs, nestling back into his neck. “You already make me feel as if I am flying, Baekhyun. I don’t need a dream to know how that feels. Adventures are only adventures when you’re there."

Baekhyun swallows nervously once more, glancing down at the black hole again.

"This should be a piece of cake then," Baekhyun says softly. "I already know what falling feels like."

He feels Jongdae smile against his shoulder before he lifts his head again, meets his gaze with a tender expression.

“I’ll see you on the other side then, love.”

Baekhyun smiles, holds tight to Jongdae's hand, and jumps.

And with that, they leap into the known, the familiar, returning to a world where dreams aren’t meant for them, where sparkling clouds don’t exist and violet thunder storms don’t follow them. Maybe they’d cheated and gotten the best part about dreams in their reality — the thrum of excitement under the skin, the rush of a heartbeat, the feeling of a hand finding another, fingers intertwining and hearts meeting through the palms.

This sensation, in all of its definitions, of feeling alive.


End file.
